Let me just start by saying that I highly recommend Golden Bay Kayaks. The people were great, the boats were great, and coming around from Golden Bay at the northern end of the Abel Tasman park actually gave us the park mostly to ourselves for the first few days, which was AMAZING!
We discovered in the previous day's safety briefing that the four of us were actually quite lazy. Here I was thinking we were setting out on this hardcore holiday, when in reality the distance that we were going to take 5 days to cover, a family of four was going to do in 3 days. They had 2 teenagers though, so I blame their over zealousness on the lack of booze, because we were stocked! Oh, and a lack of hammock because, clearly, why would you paddle for 6 hours a day when you could paddle for 3 and then lay in the hammock for 3...
There was a lot of hammock time on our trip, and I would just like to use this opportunity to give credit to Brian and Meghan for the best. present. ever. Seriously, we love that thing, so thanks again.
Day 1 of our paddle was by far the most exciting. Because we were coming around from the north, we had to get around Separation Point, which is not for the faint of heart. We got a reasonably early start, but still were in some pretty crazy wind and swell by the time we made the point. There was fear. There was yelling. There were waves breaking over my head. But, we all made it. Mad props to Brendan for digging in any time I yelled that I thought we weren't moving forward anymore and for safely steering us through the waves. And mad props to both of us for successfully surfing our kayak onto the beach. Neither of us had ever landed a kayak in surf that big before. Rumor has it that our friends had a more interesting landing than us, but sadly I missed it while concentrating on not doing what they did. :)
I was a bit nervous that night as the surf was not dying down and I was scared that we would not be able to get out in the morning. Luckily, the weather and tides cooperated beautifully though and we awoke Christmas morning to a calm, blue sky day. Merry Christmas indeed!
To be continued...
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